the ending why the random flashback?

It's just leading up to the next episode, we're going to see some things that happened after they moved to Jackson

…yeah, I’ve been waiting for the flashbacks that everyone who is familiar with the game has said will happen…and they obviously have moved the story forward now to a point where Ellie and Abby are going to meet up again so this is now when it’ll go back to seeing why Joel and Ellie’s relationship had ended up being what it was and very non communicative from her perspective…?…as Ben said, I think that Abby’s perspective/back story with her dad maybe…?…will possibly be the basis of Season 3…

…so filled with highs and lows of the best of Joel and Ellie’s relationship to the very worst in how/why it deteriorated and became what we saw right at the beginning of the season…also explaining the difficult relationship with Joel and Gail as well…I loved Ellie’s birthdays and how special Joel always made them but he sadly never gave her the one thing that she came to want most…her individuality and the freedom to make her own choices and honesty from him to help make those choices…such a great episode and creating that full circle from Joel’s own last with his father…

In what way?

…I think the last episode was excellent in showing that breakdown of the relationship with Joel and Ellie that we had seen at the beginning at the from the dance scenes but hadn’t really understood…and also that difficult relationship with the character of Gail was fully explained also…I didn’t really think that I could see Joel as anything other than someone who did what he needed to do …but he didn’t give Ellie the chance to decide whether she wanted to ‘fulfil her destiny/her purpose’ in what she could have meant to others…what she could have meant to humankind, really…and in doing that he didn’t give others, potentially so many others to be disease/virus free….what he did, even doing it for love was pretty horrendous….

Well for one they've at times made Ellie seem a bit thick - Ellie is meant to be clever/resourceful... yes early in game at one point she's saved by Dina, but in the show I swear they're making it seem like she wouldn't last 5 minutes on her own. That part aside... her still having the jokey/upbeat nature of S1 Ellie makes ZERO narrative sense. TLOU2 Ellie is rage-fuelled, depressed, and single-minded and the character HAS to be that because -- objectively speaking -- the Seattle mission is a suicide mission. They're entering a strange city full of soldiers to track down and kill a group of killers. Ellie being unable to see past her rage and trauma is half the plot. But the show has her wisecrackin' and telling jokes like "young Ellie" ... the whole point is that Joel's death broke her ... the Ellie who is in the headspace of the Ellie in the show wouldn't be in Seattle. You could argue that she's masking her trauma but if that's what it's meant to be, it's not selling. The key example I suppose is the "I suck at math and don't know what a protractor is hehe" scene... shocking writing IMO. Like yes it's fine as a throwaway joke. Prolly not when Dina is in the process of trying to figure out where Joel's killer is in a city full of soldiers :umm2:. It would only make sense if she was more herself/jokey when distracted/when they're just hanging out, before getting back to business. Joking about the actual search? It does not make sense.

And don't get me started on Dina's "I'd track them down forever and never stop" speech like wtf that is going to be a major stumbling block later on, unless they've entirely changed another crucial part of the plot and theme :joker:. Show Dina is also out for revenge. Game Dina is only there because she loves Ellie. It's a huge and important plot distinction. And [double spoilers] it's going to make Dina look like an absolute dick if the post-seattle farm/2nd mission/return plays out the same way.

I'm not a stickler for adaptations changing things from original version but with this they're doing something really odd; changing major details like this, whilst NOT changing the overall direction of the plot/major "set piece" moments, and the result doesn't make sense. Like by all means change it but that would have knock on effects.

In the last episode the conversation outaide Joel's house where she says she wants to try to forgive him... In the game the scene where she finally gets him to admit what happened was months earlier (and is the reason for their rift). The flashback scene outside the house, after the party where she says she wants to try to forgive him, is LATE in the story - you don't know that happened until after you've seen all the events of seattle. She says she wants to try, they make vague plans to watch a movie at Joel's after patrol the next day (which never happens of course, because that's when he dies). It makes her mission make even more sense.

This show way just doesn't make sense honestly. He finally admits the truth and 30 seconds later she's ready to try to fix the relationship because he says "Love you kiddo". It's not clicking! And as above the worst part of that really is that it's been done to rush the story forward... And it feels rushed.

lol people will go wild at that cliffhanger.

The finale was surprisingly decent, again all a bit rushed, my only gripe is... When Ellie got knocked off the boat, swept a couple of miles across stormy sea, washed up on a beach, had half of what is actually an Abby scene... For no reason whatsoever... And then got on a different (?) boat right back to where she was headed in the first place.

WHY?

:joker: pointless, waste of screen time and also completely unfeasible/unrealistic... She would clearly Have DROWNED.

She is knocked off the boat in-game but it's like 50 metres from the shore at the aquarium and she manages to swim ashore there. Not washed up on the Scar island :umm2:... Again for absolutely no plot reason? Really weird choice.

Jesse, that said they were preparing us...I cant die, I cant die...oh I died

…and left it perfectly leading into Abby’s story going back to day 1 again but from her perspective…which is what the game players have said, that we see it through Abby’s eyes…I’m not sure how that’ll translate from game to series though as we’ve attached so much to Ellie/as we did to Joel so it’s hard to imagine the transition…I have to say that I’m probably less excited and anticipated for the third season as I have no emotional attachment to Abby at all because of how brutal she was in her killing of Joel…

well, this is something players really struggled with too, to the extent that the poor woman who voiced Abby was getting death threats and some people "refused" to continue playing or repeatedly deliberately got the character killed. However if you go in with a open mind, Abby is a great character, and I feel you really don't have to take sides and can sympathise with both of them (and that was always the message)

…yeah, totally…it’s just getting over that thing of there being emotional room for us to have empathy with both characters…it doesn’t have to be one or the other because that’s more ‘real’ anyway, isn’t it…good/bad is very complex and layered and not a black and white thing…I’m sure that once were absorbed in Abby’s story in season 3 it’ll all feel obvious and natural but it’s something we’ll have to start experiencing first because TV stories do take us out of ‘reality’ as well and we do get attached to characters, which is the purpose/intention of the producers as well…this new Abby perspective will also keep the edge of being different as well and offering something new…

I find Ellie kind of annoying :worry: I feel like I might like Abby more

I tried really, really hard not to feel that way during this season but... yeah Bella Ramsay's Ellie is annoying. I do maintain that she played a great mid-teens Ellie in S1 (and the flashback episode confirmed that - best Ellie of the season by far) but she's not captured older/rageful Ellie at all... it's coming across entitled and irritating... like her relationship with Jessie is totally different in show (they're friends with deep respect for each other in game) and I can see WHY that is... like... he's not wrong? :joker: In the game yes she acts selfishly but it's much, much more clear that she's not thinking clearly/is totally blinded by grief, it's not "her".

Also doesn't help that I do actually slightly side Team Abby in the game narrative but it's very close "both sides have a point/both sides are also wrong" thing. In the show I'm worried people will just end up going full Team Abby :umm2:.

Yeah I agree with you about her S1 Vs S2. I liked her a lot more then :laugh: and yeah I totally get Abbys POV already even without seeing S3, I mean he murdered her dad, he wasn't a soldier and he wasn't armed :shrug:

…I like the actress who plays Abby…(…I realise that physically she doesn’t resemble the Abby of the game play…)….but it was Pedro Pascal that she brutally and coldly and torturously beat to death so I don’t know how I’ll come to feel about her when we follow her story…I mean, it was Pedro Pascal…that’s a lot and I’m still processing….

To be fair Abby comes to the conclusion that vengeance/killing Joel did nothing to help her and felt empty, that it's just a pointless cycle of violence, waaaaaaay quicker than Ellie... so it's not like she's going around happy/celebrating being a Joel-killer.

It's basically a blob of multiple infected that have grown/fused together into one big... multi-headed thing... Abby fights it in the hospital, it's horrific :joker:

…I’m guessing that it it was touched on in the finale in that Abby has leadership skills that the no one else has so she was always the one that would lead them, rather than focus on any physical aspect…I mean, she’s a great soldier as well but maybe the focus will be more with leadership qualities than physical might…

https://i.imgur.com/qN3z6Rl.png

Poor Mel gets a neck stabby rather than accidentally shot - it's pretty grim :umm2:

…what about Owen in the game…?…I didn’t feel as though his character really was given much substance in the series then ruthless…he was dead in the blink of a blink…but I guess that his character is more for Abby’s back story…I don’t think that I like this reverse thing and knowing their ending before we know their beginning and journeys…

Owen featured quite a bit in Abby's story so I imagine we'll see more of him in S3, there are also a few Abby/Owen flashbacks in game (similar to the Ellie/Joel flashbacks), I imagine they'll include some of that too. It happens the same in the game too though I think it's kind of the point - they're basically just more "unknown bad guys" up until that end of day 3, then you go back to day 1 and learn about them (while already knowing what happens to them)

…from the little but we saw of him earlier before Joel’s death, it felt that he was somewhat of a more balanced influence in Abby’s life…obviously loyal to her but not really on board with her revenge so he didn’t feel ‘bad’ to me as such and maybe deserving of a more dramatic ending than the split second one that we saw…

There's a whole Abby-sequence where you're basically just fleeing from Tommy, all you ever see of him is a shadowy figure in the distance/the rifle light and it's bloody terrifying, way scarier than any infected, Tommy is a machine :joker: